Raise the Hammer

By-Law Crawl: An Update

I'm very glad to report that we had a very successful first By-Law Crawl this past Saturday. The group has identified numerous vacant and derelict properties throughout Downtown, which have been reported to city by-law staff.

Approximately 75 people braved the cold temperatures on Saturday to take part. Unfortunately, no local councillors were present, nor were any representatives of the by-law staff, all of whom were invited.

I would hope they can take some time out of their busy schedules to attend the next crawl on Saturday, March 6, 2010. This event will work very much the same way, but we will also be doing a trash cleanup throughout the city at the same time.

If you didn't see it, CH came along on the crawl with us, as our team found a door unsecured on the ground level of the Connaught, as well as a number of other infractions. You can watch their report here.

Thanks for your support, and I hope to see you at the next By-Law Crawl on Saturday, March 6.

In other 'crawl' news, the JAMES STREET NORTH ART CRAWL is this Friday! Come down and support Hamilton's original "crawl" in all its glory.

Update: in response to this comment I've embedded the Google Map into the page. -Ed.

Jelly is a local artist, graphic designer and map maker living in Downtown Hamilton, Ontario in the Central Neighbourhood. Matt is an advocate for built heritage, toxic waste eradication and the revitalization of downtown Hamilton. www.mattjelly.com

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By UrbanRenaissance (registered) | Posted February 08, 2010 at 15:21:54

As you can see from the map, most of the buildings don't have any photos associated with them yet. So if anyone has any you can forward them to myself or to Matt and we'll get them added. The photos really drive home the sorry state some of these buildings are in and it makes the map look better (as opposed to the default pic which I threw together in MS Paint).

I couldn't be happier to hear that the crawl was such a popular success.

However, with respect to key downtown properties like the Connaught, getting the city to sporadically ticket the owners probably won't serves as much more than a minor irritant. The push should be to have the property designated under the Ontario Heritage Act.

As far as I know, the city is officially only considering designating the property under part IV of the Act. I have no confidence that they'll accomplish anything in this regard. Pressure should be applied at the provincial level to have the Connaught designated by the Minister under section 34.5(1).

The push should be to have the property designated under the Ontario Heritage Act.

That will be tough to pull off. Despite updating the Heritage Act to give it some real teeth, the Ontario Government demonstrated amply through the Lister fiasco that it's not prepared to step on municipal toes by actually designating buildings.

Ryan, you are probably right. My understanding is that there are some provincially designated properties in Ontario, but these are mostly buildings or sites with obvious touristic value.

Even so, the legal tools are there, and the Royal Connaught is a much more prominent (and arguably important) building than the Lister, so I wouldn't write off the possibility of success quite so summarily. But a tough slog it would surely be ...

Actually, yes. I was hoping we'd have a couple of teams head east, but understandably they stuck to the core. The next one will be a bit more organized, and I'll specifically assign teams to each area- ward 2 and ward 3 bear the brunt of this problem more than any other part of the city. Next time, we should have more people, more teams, more resources, and a bit wider scope.